FAQ

Q: My anti-virus application reports GT4T contains viruses.

GT4T is clean and it is tested by Cosmin Anton from softpedia.com.  Some anti-virus applications irresponsibly give out warning based on simple criteria like the size of the program, whether it uses Windows registry, etc. For example, if you check the “Load with Windows startup” option, 360 Safe (a popular Chinese anti-virus application) will report that it is a virus. Unchecking the option, it will co-exist peacefully with GT4T. If your anti-virus application gives out warnings please kindly contact me and tell me the name of the application. Thank you.

Q: I am concerned about privacy/confidentiality using Google Translate. Will GT use my translation to better its engine?

By selecting some source text and hit the hotkey, you are sending the text to Google server and it will go through it’s translation engine. The data flow is between you and Google only and it is SSL/TLS encrypted, so no any other party, including me, will get your source text. It is recommended that you only use GT4T to translate words or phrases rather than meaningful whole sentences or even paragraphs. For discussions please check out this thread:

http://tur.proz.com/forum/cat_tools_technical_help/144992-google_translate_and_confidentiality.html

And also

http://www.proz.com/forum/machine_translation_mt/151436-gt4t-page2.html#1363073

GT website offers an option for users to better its translation. GT4T does not incorporate that feature. When using GT4T, you only submit what you have selected and get the translation from Google and your corrections to the translation will never be collected or submitted. Yes, we are selfish:)

Q: Will the use of GT4T help create a trend of using machine translation and eventually damage the profession?

A post at proz.com forum says that GT4T has led a bad trend, but the only one who can damage your profession is you yourself. I know there is lots of criticism of using machine translation. And any self-respecting translator will not use results directly from any machine translations without further editing. I recommend only to use GT4T “translate” words or phrases within a sentence and never to translate more than one sentence. The main idea of GT4T is to use Google Translate as a reference tool, not a replacement of human translator. You decide which word, which part of the sentences to be translated by Google as you are translating. GT4T can help you translate faster and sometimes better, but you still have to do the job. Using Google Translate as a first-draft translator in most cases will not speed up your translation.